Volume 4, Slice 1 Part 29 (2/2)
Blount had fallen in love with his deceased wife's sister, and, in despair of overcoming her scruples as to the legality of such a marriage, shot himself in the head. He survived for some time, refusing help except from his sister-in-law. Alexander Pope a.s.serted (_Epilogue to the Satires_, Note, i. 124) that he wounded himself in the arm, pretending to kill himself, and that the result was fatal contrary to his expectations. He died in August 1693.
Shortly before his death a collection of his pamphlets and private papers was printed with a preface by Charles Gildon, under the t.i.tle of the _Oracles of Reason_. His _Miscellaneous Works_ (1695) is a fuller edition by the same editor.
BLOUNT (or BLUNT), EDWARD (b. 1565?), the printer, in conjunction with Isaac Jaggard, of _Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies_ (_1623_), usually known as the first folio of Shakespeare. It was produced under the direction of John Heming (d. 1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627), both of whom had been Shakespeare's colleagues at the Globe theatre, but as Blount combined the functions of printer and editor on other occasions, it is fair to conjecture that he to some extent edited the first folio.
The Stationers' _Register_ states that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant tailor of London, and apprenticed himself in 1578 for ten years to William Ponsonby, a stationer. He became a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1588. Among the most important of his publications are Giovanni Florio's Italian-English dictionary and his translation of Montaigne, Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_, and the _Sixe Court Comedies_ of John Lyly. He himself translated _Ars Aulica, or the Courtier's Arte_ (1607) from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci, and _Christian Policie_ (1632) from the Spanish of Juan de Santa Maria.
BLOUNT, THOMAS (1618-1679), English antiquarian, was the son of one Myles Blount, of Orleton in Herefords.h.i.+re. He was born at Bordesley, Worcesters.h.i.+re. Few details of his life are known. It appears that he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, but, being a zealous Roman Catholic, his religion interfered considerably with the practice of his profession. Retiring to his estate at Orleton, he devoted himself to the study of the law as an amateur, and also read widely in other branches of knowledge. He died at Orleton on the 26th of December 1679. His princ.i.p.al works are _Glossographia; or, a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue_ (1656, reprinted in 1707), which went through several editions and remains most amusing and instructive reading; _Nomolexicon: a law dictionary interpreting such difficult and, obscure words and terms as are found either in our common or statute, ancient or modern lawes_ (1670; third edition, with additions by W. Nelson, 1717); and _Fragmenta Antiquitatis: Ancient Tenures of land, and jocular customs of some mannors_ (1679; enlarged by J. Beckwith and republished, with additions by H.M. Beckwith, in 1815; again revised and enlarged by W.C. Hazlitt, 1874). Blount's _Boscobel_ (1651), giving an account of Charles II.'s preservation after Worcester, with the addition of the king's own account dictated to Pepys, has been edited with a bibliography by C.G.
Thomas (1894).
BLOUNT, SIR THOMAS POPE (1649-1697), English author, eldest son of Sir Henry Blount and brother of Charles Blount (q.v.), was born at Upper Holloway on the 12th of September 1649. He succeeded to the estate of t.i.ttenhanger on his mother's death in 1678, and in the following year was created a baronet. He represented the borough of St Albans in the two last parliaments of Charles II. and was knight of the s.h.i.+re from the revolution till his death. He married Jane, daughter of Sir Henry Caesar, by whom he had five sons and nine daughters. He died at t.i.ttenhanger on the 30th of June 1697. His _Censura celebrorum authorum sive tractatus in quo varia virorum doctorum de clarissimis cujusque seculi scriptoribus judicia traduntur_ (1690) was originally compiled for Blount's own use, and is a dictionary in chronological order of what various eminent writers have said about one another. This necessarily involved enormous labour in Blount's time. It was published at Geneva in 1694 with all the quotations from modern languages translated into Latin, and again in 1710. His other works are _A Natural History, containing many not common observations extracted out of the best modern writers_ (1693), _De re poetica, or remarks upon Poetry, with Characters and Censures of the most considerable Poets_ ... (1694), and _Essays on Several Occasions_ (1692). It is on this last work that his claims to be regarded as an original writer rest. The essays deal with the perversion of learning, a comparison between the ancients and the moderns (to the advantage of the latter), the education of children, and kindred topics.
In the third edition (1697) he added an eighth essay, on religion, in which he deprecated the multiplication of ceremonies. He displays throughout a hatred of pedantry and convention, which makes his book still interesting.
See A. Kippis, _Biographia Britannica_ (1780), vol. ii. For an account of Blount's family see Robert Clutterbuck. _History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford_ (1815), vol. i. pp. 207-212.
BLOUNT, WILLIAM (1749-1800), American politician, was born in Bertie county, North Carolina, on the 26th of March 1749. He was a member of the Continental Congress in 1783-1784 and again in 1786-1787, of the const.i.tutional convention at Philadelphia in 1787, and of the state convention which ratified the Federal const.i.tution for North Carolina in 1789. From 1790 until 1796 he was, by President Was.h.i.+ngton's appointment, governor of the ”Territory South of the Ohio River,”
created out of land ceded to the national government by North Carolina in 1789. He was also during this period the superintendent of Indian affairs for this part of the country. In 1791 he laid out Knoxville (Tennessee) as the seat of government. He presided over the const.i.tutional convention of Tennessee in 1796, and, on the state being admitted to the Union, became one of its first representatives in the United States Senate. In 1797 his connexion became known with a scheme, since called ”Blount's Conspiracy,” which provided for the co-operation of the American frontiersmen, a.s.sisted by Indians, and an English force, in the seizure on behalf of Great Britain of the Floridas and Louisiana, then owned by Spain, with which power England was then at war. As this scheme, if carried out, involved the corrupting of two officials of the United States, an Indian agent and an interpreter, a breach of the neutrality of the United States, and the breach of Article V. of the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real (signed on the 27th of October 1795) between the United States and Spain, by which each power agreed not to incite the Indians to attack the other, Blount was impeached by the House of Representatives on the 7th of July 1797, and on the following day was formally expelled from the Senate for ”having been guilty of high misdemeanor, entirely inconsistent with his public trust and duty as a senator.” On the 29th of January 1798 articles of impeachment were adopted by the House of Representatives. On the 14th of January 1799, however, the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, decided that it had no jurisdiction, Blount not then being a member of the Senate, and, in the Senate's opinion, not having been, even as a member, a civil officer of the United States, within the meaning of the const.i.tution.
The case is significant as being the first case of impeachment brought before the United States Senate. ”In a legal point of view, all that the case decides is that a senator of the United States who has been expelled from his seat is not after such expulsion subject to impeachment” (Francis Wharton, _State Trials_). In effect, however, it also decided that a member of Congress was not in the meaning of the const.i.tution a civil officer of the United States and therefore could not be impeached. The ”conspiracy” was disavowed by the British government, which, however, seems to have secretly favoured it. Blount was enthusiastically supported by his const.i.tuents, and upon his return to Tennessee was made a member and the presiding officer of the state senate. He died at Knoxville on the 21st of March 1800.
For a defence of Blount, see General Marcus J. Wright's _Account of the Life and Services of William Blount_ (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1884).
BLOUSE, a word (taken from the French) used for any loosely fitting bodice belted at the waist. In France it meant originally the loose upper garment of linen or cotton, generally blue, worn by French workmen to preserve their clothing, and, by transference, the workman himself.
BLOW, JOHN (1648-1708), English musical composer, was born in 1648, probably at North Collingham in Nottinghams.h.i.+re. He became a chorister of the chapel royal, and distinguished himself by his proficiency in music; he composed several anthems at an unusually early age, including _Lord, Thou hast been our refuge; Lord, rebuke me not_; and the so-called ”club anthem,” _I will always give thanks_, the last in collaboration with Pelham Humphrey and William Turner, either in honour of a victory over the Dutch in 1665, or--more probably--simply to commemorate the friendly intercourse of the three choristers. To this time also belongs the composition of a two-part setting of Herrick's _Goe, perjur'd man_, written at the request of Charles II. to imitate Carissimi's _Dite, o cieli_. In 1669 Blow became organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1673 he was made a gentleman of the chapel royal, and in the September of this year he was married to Elizabeth Braddock, who died in childbirth ten years later. Blow, who by the year 1678 was a doctor of music, was named in 1685 one of the private musicians of James II.
Between 1680 and 1687 he wrote the only stage composition by him of which any record survives, the _Masque for the Entertainment of the King: Venus and Adonis_. In this Mary Davies played the part of Venus, and her daughter by Charles II., Lady Mary Tudor, appeared as Cupid. In 1687 he became master of the choir of St Paul's church; in 1695 he was elected organist of St Margaret's, Westminster, and is said to have resumed his post as organist of Westminster Abbey, from which in 1680 he had retired or been dismissed to make way for Purcell. In 1699 he was appointed to the newly created post of composer to the chapel royal.
Fourteen services and more than a hundred anthems by Blow are extant. In addition to his purely ecclesiastical music Blow wrote _Great sir, the joy of all our hearts_, an ode for New Year's day 1681-1682; similar compositions for 1683, 1686, 1687, 1688, 1689, 1693 (?), 1694 and 1700; odes, &c., for the celebration of St Cecilia's day for 1684, 1691, 1695 and 1700; for the coronation of James II. two anthems, _Behold, O G.o.d, our Defender_, and _G.o.d spake sometimes in visions_; some harpsichord pieces for the second part of Playford's _Musick's Handmaid_ (1869); _Epicedium for Queen Mary_ (1695); _Ode on the Death of Purcell_ (1696).
In 1700 he published his Amphion Anglicus, a collection of pieces of music for one, two, three and four voices, with a figured-ba.s.s accompaniment. A famous page in Burney's _History of Music_ is devoted to ill.u.s.trations of ”Dr Blow's Crudities,” most of which only show the meritorious if immature efforts in expression characteristic of English music at the time, while some of them (where Burney says ”Here we are lost”) are really excellent. Blow died on the 1st of October 1708 at his house in Broad Sanctuary, and was buried in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey.
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